Thursday, August 20, 2015

If the establishment decides to get fully behind Jeb, we could end up with Trump as the nominee

Public Policy Polling came out with a poll of North Carolina voters yesterday and interestingly they had some head to head matchups between GOP contenders (Trump vs. Bush, Trump vs. Carson, Trump vs. Rubio and Trump vs. Walker). In all cases but one, the right coalesced behind the non-Trump candidate with Jeb Bush the only candidate losing to him. Conventional wisdom is that once candidates start dropping out, Trump will no longer be the front runner, but what this poll suggests, the identity of the remaining candidate or candidates is important. I listened to some of the things that Trump said at his NH town hall yesterday and I couldn't help but start to believe in him (and I'm definitely in the anti-Trump camp). He says it all so matter of factly and is such a non-squishy politician that if you don't think things through you can easily get swept up by him. Jeb Bush, who is enormously disliked, is not the one to unseat Trump. He is also about as exciting as toothpaste or a box of hair.

And one more thing, what is up with Rand Paul supporters in North Carolina? They are the only non-Trump supporters who consistently back Donald Trump in head to head matchups in this poll (see the data tables below, click to enlarge). That is pretty shocking considering he is probably the exact opposite of a libertarian, being a devout statist (it's hard to argue that having the government round up millions of people [including children] from their homes at the point of a gun is consistent with the idea of individual freedom). You think the war on drugs was intrusive? Wait until Donald Trump's war on immigrants.